Spring season was a weird one this year. J.C. Staff broke their track record of great romance anime that made me squeal like a schoolgirl with Dai Shogun. An anime so bad, that despite the giant target it painted on its head I couldn't drag myself through the rest of its 12 episodes to pull the trigger. While on the other hand Studio Brain's Base came out that with an anime that I am so biased about, the review might very well be featured on Fox.
How is this in anyway related to Mekaku City Actors? It's not, why do you ask?
Mekaku actors is anime about Shintaro. A shut in, who unlike most of us, has a reason for shutting the world out behind layers of anime and forum posts about how 'the manga was so much better.' He is the main charac--- actually I lied. This anime is about an idol named Momo. She has a problem that most of us can only dream of--that being that everyone likes her too much. Which I would say on the scale of things would exist only slightly on the first world problems side of—this anime is about a monster and her kids who—okay if you haven't gotten that this anime is confusing as all hell allow me to bludgeon you over the head with it; THIS ANIME IS CONFUSING AS ALL HELL.
See there's a little problem this anime has. It tries to take a massive amount of source material and cram it all into the span of 12, 20 minute, episodes. Which, in terms of telling a coherent story, is about as small small as the mental issues of people claiming that Obama is a socialist terrorist trying to overthrow the 'murican dream.
If you're going to have a cast large enough to make up a small nation, you need to the screen time to, I don't know, develop them. It doesn't matter how well it does in developing the characters if the time it has to do so is as much as a play-through of Half Minute Hero. But if the fight for character equality is what they were trying to win, let me just say that they lost so horribly they Brazil look like Napoleon Bonaparte.
See aside from splitting the already small measure of time among a large group of time, the anime really likes to play favorites. Like seeing Mary compete with Momo over the Ms. Moe award? Great, not like it matters because Mary is voiced by Kana Hanazawa! You like Seto?
Not to mention that the anime is constantly playing catch-up. Characters are constantly having dream sequences, flashbacks or otherwise complaining. It's almost as though Shaft didn't give it enough time for full character development.
Now that's not to say that the anime has nothing going for it in the character department. That being this guy. That being Hibiya, the little boy who started out as an annoying brat, but slowly became my favorite character of the whole lot (Ironically is voiced by Misuzu Togashi, who seems to be the queen of such characters). Who's only distinguishing characteristic from the other wimpy character who goes for a girl for reasons that no-one else can comprehend, is that instead of said girl stalking him and killing everyone he cares about, she ignores him like yesterday's trash. See he gets a whole episode devoted to him and benefits because of it. Not to mention his development happens in real time.
Now, while I'm certainly no Einstein , I don't consider myself stupid and am generally able to follow complex plots in things like Game of Thrones or the Wire, but hand me a fiddle and call me psyduck because I was confused.
Then again, what can you expect when your show is produced by anime's equivalent of Picasso on an acid trip, with a plot-line with the consistency of the political climate in Israel being set hundreds of years in the future.
Even the aforementioned episode with good character development left me dazed and confused. To give an example one episode involved a girl repeatedly getting run over by a truck, with
the protagonist trying and failing to save her,until finally taking her place. Without giving away any more, this never seemed to have much impact on the real world as a physical manifestation ended up having the real consequences.
Like I said when talking about Captain Earth, I have absolutely no problem with an anime treating me like someone with a higher IQ than your average George Bush, but there is a balance between expositional dialogue and completely isolating anyone who hasn't received a P.H.D in bullshit.
Like the characters the plot of the anime had potential. I love the idea of time looping, with anime like Higurashi and All you need is kill proving that this can work. It's an original structure of storytelling that unlike the traditional time travel concept has not been recycled to stage where if not for the amount of car chases, I'd think that Hollywood was going green.
Problem is Mekaku wants to have its cake and eat it too. Let's compare; Higurashi, 50 episodes. Mekaku, 12. Hmmm, y'know for an anime about repeating the same series of events like a washing machine stuck on spin, that seems like a pretty damn short time.
Yeah, remember the pain you felt as your favorite characters died horrible, horrible deaths while the anime dangled the words 'happy ending' in front of you face like a carrot on a string? See, Shaft knows that that gave so much more meaning to the ending and so development to the characters, that they decided to skip to the end.
All the tragedy and character development happened, but do you ever get to see any of it? Silly, Shaft can't spend that much time on this, they have more important things to Bioshock and actually playing it yourself. No matter how well they tell it, it will never match up to experiencing do. Like procrastinating on releasing Kizumonogatari.
This results in the anime having so much of the potential stripped away from the show. It's the difference between having someone tell you how much fun they had playing something like it yourself.
Since I've already wasted enough of your time, I'll keep this next part short;
Overall the experience is best described as a roller-coaster, with the peaks of animation being higher than Colorado on the twentieth of April and the low points hitting rock bottom so hard you'd think that the whole thing was set in a quarry (don't worry that joke hurt me just as much as it did you). Special shout-out goes to the ninth episode for ruining good impressions of 3d animation leftover from Ars Nova.
Now you might think from what I've said here, that my overall impression of the show was negative. Yet...hmm. I liked it...sorta.
The anime was fun, and as anyone who has seen any Shaft anime can testify to, even at its lowest points the anime was nice to look at. The plot and characters, if given enough time and a bit more exposition, had enough potential to become at least above-average if not becoming genuinely unique and interesting. Not to say that their bad here, but due to time constraints and an over-reliance on flashbacks as a means of development, they never manage to break out of the 'average' category. The plot, while confusing and riddled with enough plot holes to make it a 'holy grail' if you will, was entertaining and tried to keep things interesting. The sound design is great, with an all-star cast and some fantastic ost and insert songs.
So I'd say that if you've really got your heart set on the latest Shaftien mystery wrapped up in an enigma, or if you've still got Edge of Tomorrow withdrawal, give it a shot.
For the rest of you, my friend strongly recommends checking out the manga or light novels, which he says are much, much better.
Thanks for reading, and as always likes, follows and spreading the word is always appreciated!
How is this in anyway related to Mekaku City Actors? It's not, why do you ask?
Mekaku actors is anime about Shintaro. A shut in, who unlike most of us, has a reason for shutting the world out behind layers of anime and forum posts about how 'the manga was so much better.' He is the main charac--- actually I lied. This anime is about an idol named Momo. She has a problem that most of us can only dream of--that being that everyone likes her too much. Which I would say on the scale of things would exist only slightly on the first world problems side of—this anime is about a monster and her kids who—okay if you haven't gotten that this anime is confusing as all hell allow me to bludgeon you over the head with it; THIS ANIME IS CONFUSING AS ALL HELL.
See there's a little problem this anime has. It tries to take a massive amount of source material and cram it all into the span of 12, 20 minute, episodes. Which, in terms of telling a coherent story, is about as small small as the mental issues of people claiming that Obama is a socialist terrorist trying to overthrow the 'murican dream.
If you're going to have a cast large enough to make up a small nation, you need to the screen time to, I don't know, develop them. It doesn't matter how well it does in developing the characters if the time it has to do so is as much as a play-through of Half Minute Hero. But if the fight for character equality is what they were trying to win, let me just say that they lost so horribly they Brazil look like Napoleon Bonaparte.
See aside from splitting the already small measure of time among a large group of time, the anime really likes to play favorites. Like seeing Mary compete with Momo over the Ms. Moe award? Great, not like it matters because Mary is voiced by Kana Hanazawa! You like Seto?
 |
Now that's not to say that the anime has nothing going for it in the character department. That being this guy. That being Hibiya, the little boy who started out as an annoying brat, but slowly became my favorite character of the whole lot (Ironically is voiced by Misuzu Togashi, who seems to be the queen of such characters). Who's only distinguishing characteristic from the other wimpy character who goes for a girl for reasons that no-one else can comprehend, is that instead of said girl stalking him and killing everyone he cares about, she ignores him like yesterday's trash. See he gets a whole episode devoted to him and benefits because of it. Not to mention his development happens in real time.
Now, while I'm certainly no Einstein , I don't consider myself stupid and am generally able to follow complex plots in things like Game of Thrones or the Wire, but hand me a fiddle and call me psyduck because I was confused.
Then again, what can you expect when your show is produced by anime's equivalent of Picasso on an acid trip, with a plot-line with the consistency of the political climate in Israel being set hundreds of years in the future.
Even the aforementioned episode with good character development left me dazed and confused. To give an example one episode involved a girl repeatedly getting run over by a truck, with
the protagonist trying and failing to save her,until finally taking her place. Without giving away any more, this never seemed to have much impact on the real world as a physical manifestation ended up having the real consequences.
 |
Whoah sorry had a bit of Déjà vu |
Like I said when talking about Captain Earth, I have absolutely no problem with an anime treating me like someone with a higher IQ than your average George Bush, but there is a balance between expositional dialogue and completely isolating anyone who hasn't received a P.H.D in bullshit.
Like the characters the plot of the anime had potential. I love the idea of time looping, with anime like Higurashi and All you need is kill proving that this can work. It's an original structure of storytelling that unlike the traditional time travel concept has not been recycled to stage where if not for the amount of car chases, I'd think that Hollywood was going green.
Problem is Mekaku wants to have its cake and eat it too. Let's compare; Higurashi, 50 episodes. Mekaku, 12. Hmmm, y'know for an anime about repeating the same series of events like a washing machine stuck on spin, that seems like a pretty damn short time.
Yeah, remember the pain you felt as your favorite characters died horrible, horrible deaths while the anime dangled the words 'happy ending' in front of you face like a carrot on a string? See, Shaft knows that that gave so much more meaning to the ending and so development to the characters, that they decided to skip to the end.
All the tragedy and character development happened, but do you ever get to see any of it? Silly, Shaft can't spend that much time on this, they have more important things to Bioshock and actually playing it yourself. No matter how well they tell it, it will never match up to experiencing do. Like procrastinating on releasing Kizumonogatari.
This results in the anime having so much of the potential stripped away from the show. It's the difference between having someone tell you how much fun they had playing something like it yourself.
Since I've already wasted enough of your time, I'll keep this next part short;
Overall the experience is best described as a roller-coaster, with the peaks of animation being higher than Colorado on the twentieth of April and the low points hitting rock bottom so hard you'd think that the whole thing was set in a quarry (don't worry that joke hurt me just as much as it did you). Special shout-out goes to the ninth episode for ruining good impressions of 3d animation leftover from Ars Nova.
 |
| That Tree... |
Now you might think from what I've said here, that my overall impression of the show was negative. Yet...hmm. I liked it...sorta.
The anime was fun, and as anyone who has seen any Shaft anime can testify to, even at its lowest points the anime was nice to look at. The plot and characters, if given enough time and a bit more exposition, had enough potential to become at least above-average if not becoming genuinely unique and interesting. Not to say that their bad here, but due to time constraints and an over-reliance on flashbacks as a means of development, they never manage to break out of the 'average' category. The plot, while confusing and riddled with enough plot holes to make it a 'holy grail' if you will, was entertaining and tried to keep things interesting. The sound design is great, with an all-star cast and some fantastic ost and insert songs.
So I'd say that if you've really got your heart set on the latest Shaftien mystery wrapped up in an enigma, or if you've still got Edge of Tomorrow withdrawal, give it a shot.
For the rest of you, my friend strongly recommends checking out the manga or light novels, which he says are much, much better.
Thanks for reading, and as always likes, follows and spreading the word is always appreciated!
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